


and i'm swirling, softly

by GerryStAmour



Series: Jupeter requests! (requests CLOSED | 6/17 Completed) [6]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Healthy Communication, Kissing, Nightmares, Other, Past Suicidal Thoughts - Mentioned, and they were soulmates (oh my god they were soulmates), no betas we die like mne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-10 05:55:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27909328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GerryStAmour/pseuds/GerryStAmour
Summary: Peter was awoken by an elbow slamming into his gut and knocking the wind from him.His hand slid under his pillow instinctively, only to find his knife missing. No, not missing—Peter hadn’t slept with a knife under his pillow since he started spending the night in Juno’s quarters weeks ago.-A request fill for fav_littleleaf!
Relationships: Peter Nureyev/Juno Steel
Series: Jupeter requests! (requests CLOSED | 6/17 Completed) [6]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2024980
Comments: 28
Kudos: 166





	and i'm swirling, softly

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fav_littleleaf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fav_littleleaf/gifts).



> _**fav_littleleaf said:** I was wondering if you'd write Juno waking up from a nightmare about what happened in the Martian tomb and Peter comforting him?_
> 
> This was such a lovely prompt! I'm hoping I did a decent job at it!
> 
> **A FEW NOTES:**
> 
>   * The scars I describe on Nureyev are similar to the Lichtenberg figure scars that nex_et_nox described in their _amazing_ fic [get up, shake the rust](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27643669) which y'all should read immediately.
>   * There is brief discussion about depression and canon past suicidal thoughts and Juno's attempt to end his own life.
> 

> 
> That's all I can think to warn about, so HERE WE GO!

Peter was awoken by an elbow slamming into his gut and knocking the wind from him.

His hand slid under his pillow instinctively, only to find his knife missing. No, not missing—Peter hadn’t slept with a knife under his pillow since he started spending the night in Juno’s quarters weeks ago. 

So he forced himself to wake up fully, sitting up and readying himself for a fight. However, when Peter managed to blink the sleep from his eyes and squint around the dark room, he couldn’t see  _ anything _ that could explain the blow that had woken him up. For several moments, Peter panicked thinking another shape-shifting bot had ended up on board, except this one was sent to kill them.

Then Juno twitched and moaned next to him and his attention immediately shifted.

Juno was usually a fairly steady bed partner, warm and soft and perfect for snuggling up to and keeping the chill from Peter’s bones. The former detective didn’t keep a decent sleep schedule by any means, and he slept lightly most nights, but he was usually very still. He said it came from stake-outs, when he had to spend long hours in uncomfortable places where he could only take power naps.

But now, his entire body flinched and writhed with whatever dream occupied him. If Peter hadn’t known better, he would’ve thought it was one of those very  _ good  _ dreams, with the way Juno panted and whimpered. But Juno’s eyebrows were pinched together, sweat beaded across his forehead and upper-lip and coating his throat and chest. There was a downward tilt to the corners of his mouth, and when he opened it to groan, the sound was pained and mournful.

“Juno, love,” Peter said shakily, hesitant to touch him lest he wake up violently. 

Juno merely gasped at the sound of Peter’s voice and whimpered. 

“ _ No, _ ” Juno moaned low in his chest before he let out a sob and lifted a hand to cover his right eye, or where it had been. “ _ Quit it _ .”

“Juno you have to wake up!” Peter said firmly, hovering a hand over his lover’s shoulder, ready to grab and shake him if he didn’t wake up or settle on his own. “Juno,  _ please _ !”

When Juno yelled in a way Peter hadn’t heard him do since the Martian tomb, it clicked—the last thing they had discussed before bed had been the weeks they spent at Miasma’s mercy together. 

Juno had traced the branching burn scars where the electrified diodes had been attached to Peter’s arms, back, chest, and stomach over the course of their imprisonment. Of course, he hadn’t sustained all of the injuries at the same time. It was a new wound, a new burn, and a new scar for every day he stayed there. 

Back then, they had been angry, ugly things, surrounded by further branching where his blood vessels had burst, almost like bruises across his skin. After nearly two years, the parts of his injuries Peter had actually thought were perhaps pretty if he squinted had faded away, and he had been left with the raised, discoloured burn scars.

Juno had stared at the map of pain across his skin earlier that evening, seeing them for the first time since they were fresh and angry. He touched each scar gently with sure fingers, guilt etched across his face and quiet apologies falling from his lips, which Peter refused to accept.

_ “If I didn’t screw up so much—”  _

_ “Juno, she would have hurt me regardless. She was  _ very  _ angry with me.”  _

_ “But I—”  _

_ “Do not carry what she did to me, Juno. I did not blame you then, nor did i blame you after, and I certainly do not blame you now.” _

When Peter had drifted off to sleep, Juno had been tracing the scars on his chest, his expression serious and thoughtful. At least, at the time Peter had interpreted it as thoughtful, but in hindsight he knew it had been  _ guilt _ still eating Juno up from the inside.

With a calming breath, Peter grabbed Juno’s shoulder and shook him. “Juno— _ ah _ !”

Juno woke with a flurry of movement, a hand flashing up to grab Peter’s wrist and flipping them. Now straddling his stomach and pinning his wrist to the pillows, Juno loomed over Peter with wild eyes and his chest heaved with his panting breaths. Peter laid still beneath him, not for a second concerned for his safety, and waited for Juno to shake off the dusty, Martian tomb.

“‘Reyev?” Juno asked as he returned to the present, his brow furrowing as he swallowed and looked around his quarters. He looked back down at Peter and, realizing the position they now sat in, gasped out, “Oh shit, what happened?”

“You were having a nightmare, my love,” Peter said softly, reaching up with his free hand to cup Juno’s cheek soothingly.

Juno blinked down at him, with one deep blue eye and the smooth white face of his implant, and said nothing as those eyes filled with tears. 

That alarmed Peter more than anything else had since waking. He was not unused to Juno’s tears, and had discovered that the sensitive detective was prone to having intense emotional responses. But that was normally after hours of discussion when Juno’s nerves were shot and he was wrung out from holding things together.

To be in tears already meant the nightmare had been truly something awful.

With a shuddery breath, Juno dropped forward to bury his face into Peter’s chest and shook with the force of his emotion. Without even a moment’s hesitation, Peter wrapped his arms around Juno’s back as he quietly shushed him, pressing a kiss to the top of his head.

He wasn’t sure how long they laid there, Juno crying silently into his chest while Peter held him and rubbed soothing paths up and down his back. Eventually, Juno sucked in a jerky breath before releasing it in a gusty sigh, all of the tension in his body disappearing. Only then did Peter finally allow himself to breathe again.

“Would you like to talk about it?” Peter asked quietly, stopping the movement of his hands on Juno’s back so he could just hold him instead.

Juno seemed to think about it before shaking his head, sighing when Peter kissed his silk cap again.

“Would you like me to talk about something?” Peter continued.

There was a long pause before Juno shook his head.

“Can I see you, my love?” Peter asked softly, wanting to see for himself that Juno was settled and okay after all of that. 

It was slow, but Juno eventually lifted his head to meet Peter’s gaze, eyes puffy and cheeks damp with drying tears. Peter cupped Juno’s jaw and smiled warmly up at him. When the former detective attempted a weak smile in return, Peter gently stroked his cheek with his thumb, wiping a newly fallen tear away.

“May I kiss you?” Peter requested, and Juno nodded with a soft, needy sound and met his mouth halfway.

They moved against each other, tender and sweet with Juno sighing into Peter’s mouth as he shifted his hand to hold the back of his neck firmly. After some time, Peter gently rolled them onto their sides, holding Juno tightly as he deepened the kiss a bit. As searching as it was, it lacked all heat and urgency, serving merely as a point of connection, an anchor for each of them in the present. When they parted, Juno whimpered and chased after Peter’s lips, capturing him again.

Peter chuckled softly into the kiss and reached up to cradle the back of Juno’s head. When Juno pushed to deepen it, Peter pulled back, pressing two of his fingers to Juno’s lips when he surged forward for more.

“Juno,” Peter said firmly when he huffed in annoyance, meeting a glare through the darkness with a soothing smile. “You don’t have to talk about the nightmare, but we’re not doing  _ that _ tonight.”

There was a long moment when Juno looked like he was about to argue with him, his mouth pressed into a tight line and his nostrils flaring. Then, all at once, he let out a gusty sigh and deflated against the mattress.

“You’re right,” Juno whispered, letting his eyes flutter shut tiredly. “You’re always right.”

“Not always, love,” Peter chuckled a bit, pressing a soft kiss to Juno’s forehead with a warm sigh. “Only usually.”

Juno snorted. “So modest, too,” he muttered, snuggling in tighter. Then he said, “I know it wasn’t my fault.”

Peter didn’t have to ask what he meant. “That’s good,” he said simply, kissing Juno’s forehead again.

“I know you never blamed me, and you never will,” Juno added before letting out a slow breath. “It’s… hard. To not blame myself. I mean, I’ve been blaming myself for pretty much  _ everything _ for most of my life. It’s a hard habit to break.”

“I can imagine,” Peter said solemnly, and he found he actually could. 

There were big boxes in his mind labelled ‘Mag,’ ‘Brahma,’ and ‘Miasma,’ all full to bursting with his guilt. The fact that Juno blamed himself at all about what they went through together when it had been Peter’s fault the entire time was steadily filling another box named ‘Juno’.

“I—” Juno started, his voice choking off. After a moment, he said, “I can still  _ hear _ the way you scr— the way you  _ sounded _ in that tomb. And the way you comforted  _ me _ every night when you were the one being  _ tortured _ —”

“Juno, I would hardly call what you went through less torture than—” Peter started, but Juno made a sharp noise.

“Nureyev, you have burn scars all over your body,” Juno snapped a bit. “What did I walk away with to show for it?”

Peter said nothing as he lifted a hand to blindly trace a finger along the outer edge of Juno’s right eye while he shifted his lips to kiss one of the several scars that circled his head like a crown. At least most nights when they were finally taken back to their cell, Peter would be on his feet. Juno was rarely conscious, and he was always covered in so much blood. Every night, as he sat in agony with new burns to coddle, watching the hitching rise and fall of Juno’s chest, Peter decided he would withstand however much he had to.

Leaving had been the hardest thing he’d ever done.

“Neither of us left that tomb unscathed, my love,” Peter whispered against Juno’s forehead, kissing him again and closing his eyes. “But we both survived. That’s all that matters.”

“Yeah,” Juno sighed, and laughed a bit, sounding sleepy. “I’m actually… happy about that. The surviving part, I mean. I wasn’t back then, and I wasn’t for a long time. I am now, though.”

Peter couldn’t say he understood that; even at his darkest points he never  _ wanted _ to die. But he was trying to understand it, or at least trying to be supportive in a way he wasn’t back then. Of course, Juno reassured him on that front as well— _ “Even if you knew what to say, I wouldn’t’ve thanked you. Probably would’ve left you at the clinic in Olympus Mons.” _ —but still, finding out how poorly he had misread that entire situation had been a wake-up call.

“I’m glad,” Peter said simply, even if he wanted to say so much more to his beautiful lady. 

He wanted to tell him how much he loved Juno, and how good it was to want to live and how proud he was. But Juno had confessed that being praised for staying alive did more to frame his grey days or low points as ‘bad’ than his conscious decision to recover as ‘good.’ 

“Me too,” Juno agreed, and when he tilted his head back, Peter was ready to accept the kiss the former detective had for him.

“What can we do to avoid something like this in the future, love?” he asked when they parted again, rolling over and pulling Juno close so he was sprawled on top of him.

“I dunno,” Juno mumbled tiredly, yawning loudly before adding, “Maybe don’t end on something so heavy?”

“So… more tickle fights before sleep after heavy topics?” Peter suggested, just to hear Juno’s snort.

“Not really what I—”

“Tickle fights it is!” Peter interrupted with a smile, dragging his fingers up Juno’s ribs teasingly and delighting in his muffled squeal.

“Stop’t!” Juno whined, grabbing at Peter’s wrist and huffing a bit when he evaded capture easily. “Seriously, ‘Reyev, I’m about to pass out.”

Peter paused to listen closely to Juno’s breathing and tone, and figured that for the most part he sounded okay. 

“Alright, love,” Peter said, kissing the top of Juno’s silk cap and settling back against the pillows. With a sigh, Peter said, “Good night, Juno.”

“Night, ‘Reyev,” Juno mumbled back, and Peter could feel the small smile against his chest.

Just as Peter was drifting off again, he heard a very soft “I love you” and felt a gentle kiss against one of the scars on his chest.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find me on [Tumblr](HTTP://gerrystamour.tumblr.com) or [Twitter](HTTP://twitter.com/petootnureyev)!
> 
> I also have a server for 21yo+ fans of TPP, which include Y2K babies! [Click here for more information](https://tppadultserver.carrd.co/)!


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